The following are six tips to help you on your journey to get that degree or certification you’ve always wanted and give your career a kick start.
Split up the reading
Split up you reading into weekly intervals. It’s recommend you do this as soon as you get your materials. Rip the shrink wrap off the book and calculate how many days you have and how many pages you must read in order to finish the book. Creating a weekly reading schedule, writing it down, and posting it publicly might be helpful. Post how much reading you must do each day on a calendar and when you finish the reading, cross it off. There’s nothing more irritatingly motivating than hearing your loved ones (or colleagues) ask you if you’ve done your reading for the day. What’s most important with this step is that you devise a “reading plan” in the beginning and stick to it as you go along. Reading an entire text book in a week can be done. Breaking the reading down into small chunks will give you a sense of accomplishment every day and will help you avoid the “my test is on Friday and I have to read 500 pages in 4 days” feeling.
Sneak it in
Try keeping some review materials on you at all times — even if it is something as simple as a note card with review concepts on it. There are tons of times throughout the day that you will have five to 10 minute periods when you are free. These include waiting in a doctor’s office, walking to the car, waiting at line in the grocery store, waiting to pick up your kids, etc. You might as well leverage these times to study. The more time you can “sneak” studying in, the less time you’ll have to devote to studying later in the night when you could be spending time alone or doing something more interesting.
Multi-task
To continue from the point above, there are many tasks that you complete each day that are appropriate for multi-tasking and getting some studying in: cooking dinner, working out, going to the bathroom, etc.
Make one sacrifice per day
In order to complete your course, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices. Skipping an hour of TV per night might make it possible for you to complete your reading and make you not feel like you are making major sacrifices in life.
Create a planned cram
The day (or week) before your exam you’ll likely start to feel rising levels of stress. If you can swing it, take a vacation day the day before your exam. Even if you feel totally confident with the material, having the day off of work will keep your stress levels down, clear your head, and give you the opportunity to brush up on some of the material that you may have been brushing off. In the worst case scenario, planning your day well ahead of time will give you an opportunity to cram especially if you are in the “I need to read 500 pages in 4 days” scenario.
Conclusion
Some days will be easier than others. The coursework you’re studying will be difficult, but don’t let the difficult days be representative of the good days. If you’re still having a hard time finding the motivation to study, try getting up earlier. It will probably take a course or two for you to develop your own system. Hopefully these tips will be enough to start you on your way.
Lifehack.org
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